


Honeylamb

by stitchy



Series: Keeping it in the Family [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Birthdays, Eddie Lives don't even trip, F/M, Family Drama, Fix-It, Good Parents Maggie & Wentworth Tozier, M/M, Maggie Tozier POV, Mother-Son Relationship, The Tozier family - Freeform, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23028805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: The nurse double checks that her bracelet matches the bassinet before they’re separated: Margaret Tozier, Baby Tozier- just as they should be.“What name did you decide?” she asks.“Richard,” Maggie smiles.The nurse chuckles a little. “You don’t hear as much of that one as you used to, since Watergate.”
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Maggie Tozier & Richie Tozier, Maggie Tozier/Wentworth Tozier
Series: Keeping it in the Family [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654831
Comments: 101
Kudos: 616





	Honeylamb

**Author's Note:**

> This work pairs with The Kid's Table, a Richie POV about his relationship with his sister and many many many Thanksgivings. I think this can stand on it's own and/or could be read first- but if you're wondering how the big hubbub went down at Thanksgiving 2000, it's glossed over here, and might be worth hopping over to the other fic at that point. Let me know if it works for you, and I might provide different reading instructions in future!

The weather was terrible, getting to the hospital, but Maggie hadn’t been worried. She knew what to expect, and it was easier this time, with her little tiptoeing March lamb. A boy, just like she wanted. Now she has one of each.

After Went takes Bridget home for the night, it’s just the two of them again, like it had been all these months. It won’t be long now, before someone comes to take him to the nursery so she can get some sleep, so she makes sure not to miss her chance.

“Happy birthday to you,” she sings to her son. Her voice is still a little hoarse, but he doesn’t mind. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear baby, happy birthday to you.”

He snuffles quietly, having everything he needs and a song besides. He doesn’t fuss until the nurse comes in and takes one of Maggie’s hands away from holding him. The nurse double checks that her bracelet matches the bassinet before they’re separated: Margaret Tozier DOB 08/20/49, Baby Tozier DOB 03/7/76- just as they should be.

“What name did you decide?” she asks.

“Richard,” Maggie smiles.

The nurse chuckles a little. “You don’t hear as much of that one as you used to, since Watergate.”

Maggie hadn’t even considered it. She’s known what she would name a little boy since well before all that. If her mother’s opinion couldn’t put her off, this nurse’s won’t either. “My brother’s name was Richard,” she says, simply.

“Oh, that’s nice. Keep it in the family.”

That’s the whole idea, Maggie thinks, kissing his little head goodnight.

-One -

The moment he has his socks off, Richie is always grabbing his toes. _Rrrritchy itchy itchy toes Tozier_ , Went likes to call him, rolling the R. Maggie can’t do it as well, but she does try. It makes him giggle.

“You’re giving me ideas,” she tells him as she tangles with this unstoppable fascination so that she can change him. “I should train you to give Mommy a foot massage.”

She’s trying to get back into the habit of wearing heels again, and she’ll be dying to kick them off after the party. Maybe when everyone else has gone home, they can unwind and rub their feet together, Richie with his bottle, and Maggie with an on-the-sly Schlitz. Couldn’t wear flats or enjoy a single beer in front of her mother _during_ the party, no sir!

“There, now. Sorry to bust up your good time, but it _is_ chilly,” she says, replacing his socks. 

Richie looks betrayed, but she scoops him up off the changing table too fast, too high, too fun for him to cry about it.

“What should Mommy wear, hmm? Should we match?” she suggests, heading out of the room.

-Three-

There are plenty of new toys that have just been unwrapped, but only one that Richie really wants.

“Bridge! Bridge! My turn,” he insists, circling around his sister as she deftly avoids him, shielding the Simon she got last Christmas with her larger body.

“No it’s not!”

Bridget hammers away at the buttons, not missing a beat. Richie just wants to make the sounds happen, but she’s deep into a pattern. She’s very good with patterns. There must be twenty tones in the game’s little song by now. Maggie _could_ suggest that Bridget finds something else to play that they could do together, but she’s sort of fascinated by how far this could go.

“ _Briiiidge!_ ” Richie wails, throwing himself at Bridget’s back and _that’s_ exactly how far it goes, if she has anything to say about.

“No!” Bridget flings him back, sending her brother toppling, head over heels.

“Bridget!” Maggie barks. “No pushing!”

Bridget misses the next beat on her game as she apologizes and behind her Richie starts to cry. It’s a very thick carpet in the den, and he didn’t go down very hard but Maggie opens her arms as he rushes over for comfort all the same. He’s been taking a lot of miscalculated tumbles lately. How old had Richard been when they figured out he needed glasses? Five or six?

“Muh-huh-meee,” he sobs.

“Oh, honeylamb,” she pats his back. “You were surprised, weren’t you?”

Richie nods and muffles into her shoulder. He’s all right.

“Come sit with Mommy awhile,” Maggie says, pulling him up into her lap on the couch.

Next to her, her mother harrumphs. “You shouldn’t let him cry like that, Margaret. He’ll turn out soft like your brother.”

“I would hope so,” Maggie hisses under her breath. She can’t wait until the kids are old enough to have school friends at a party instead of bitter old relatives.

  
  
-Four-

“She makes me crazy,” Maggie tells Went. He hadn’t realized that she had purposely omitted mention of the get-together this weekend. She should have warned him not to say anything, but he’s warning her now.

“She loves the kids,” says Went. He’s helping Richie into a snowsuit, a purple hand-me-down of Bridget’s that her mother would _especially_ hate. “Who wouldn’t?” Went adds, puckering up to kiss and cuddle their boy once he’s zipped up.

“Who?” Richie asks, confused. They probably shouldn’t be disparaging Grandma in front of the children, but Maggie’s been on a roll since Went let it slip.

“No one you know, honey,” Maggie says, clipping up her own galoshes. She whips back to Went. “But _you_ get to mind her this time.” 

The thing is, even if her mother loves them on some instinctive level, she doesn’t _like_ children. As Mister Rogers might put it, she’s too concerned with what they could one day be, and completely disinterested in who they are now. She can’t see them as actual, albeit little people. _Margaret, graduated from Middlebury, Margaret, married. Margaret, two babies and a well-kept home._ There had never been any appreciation for Maggie, very good at climbing trees, along the way- or Maggie, can’t really sing but likes to, or Maggie who read lots of mysteries and could always guess the endings. Or _any_ for Richard. There hadn’t been enough time for Richard to start racking up accolades in their mother’s eye.

“Mo-om!” Bridget tugs on Maggie’s hand and she realizes they haven’t put mittens on anyone yet.

“Oh, here, sweetpea, take these. Where’s your hat got to?”

  
  
-Five-

At least since it’s a Saturday, they can take some time getting around to digging out the driveway. There’s no pressing appointment at the "Wentist’s Office" first thing in the morning. Maggie has a few errands to run in the car before lunch, when Andrea Uris and her little boy will be by, since they live close enough. Just about everyone one else called to cancel when the blizzard really kicked up, and it’s hard to blame them. Even by Maine standards, it was looking pretty rough. She and Went ended up taking advantage of the moaning wind last night, so while she’s sorry for Richie’s social calendar, Maggie’s own dance card is quite happily punched. The creeping dawn is made all the more cozy sweet by the whited out windows, looking like the inside of gift wrap. She does her best not to laugh too loud at Went’s jokes as they lay together.

“Uh oh,” he says, pointing at the blank window. “No picture. Musta forgot to pay the cable bill this month!” Then Went rolls over, facing only her and fiddling with an imaginary dial. “Wait. Wait. I’m getting a picture now. I think-” he ruffles her hair, “-I can see a beautiful woman if I adjust the antenna...”

“That’s not the antenna,” Maggie smirks, flicking her eyes down at him.

“Woah, I didn’t realize I was shelling out for the adult channel.”

There’s a knock at the bedroom door that they’ve only recently gotten comfortable with locking (what if, what if, what if), but it ought to save the kids some embarrassment, and does this morning. “You better not be having fun in there,” says a little voice. “Not without me, it’s _my_ birthday.”

“No, of course not!” Maggie calls back. She slips her nightie on as she goes to let Richie in.

Just as soon as the door is open, he tackles around her legs like a monkey on a tree. “Sing to me! You hafta!”

She always does, first thing, but he’s old enough for a little teasing, now. Maggie rocks to an unheard guitar riff. “Round, round, get around, I get aroooound-”

“No!” Richie giggles. He scrambles up onto the bed as she sits, planting himself between Mommy and Daddy. “The right one, Mommy!”

“He must mean ‘Little Deuce Coupe’,” Went chuckles.

They sing Happy Birthday to him, and of course it alerts Bridget to the impromptu family follies. By the last note, she bounces into bed too. “Do Speve and Spike! Do Speve and Spike!”

“AH!” Richie frights, diving into his sister’s arms. “Bridge, no!”

She laughs as Went spiders his hands, descending down from their web for a tickle.

“No spiders! It’s _my_ birthday, no spiders.”

Naturally, once Richie realizes he can tickle back, he changes his tune.

  
  
-Six-

The phone rings in the kitchen, so Maggie leaves the kids with A.A. Milne, carefully sounding out a rhyme from a new book.

 _When I was One,  
_ _I had just begun.  
_ _When I was Two,  
_ _I was nearly new.  
_ _When I was Three  
_ _I was hardly me.  
_ _When I was Four,  
_ _I was not much more.  
_ _When I was Five, I was just alive.  
_ _But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,  
_ _So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever._

“Good morning, Mrs. Tozier speaking.”

“Hi, Mags.”

“Sharon! Are you getting along all right?”

She must be about to pop. Maggie doesn’t remember her due-date exactly, but the last time she saw Mrs. Denbrough without a coat on at the kindergarten, she was so big it made Maggie’s feet hurt in sympathy.

“Do you think you could come over today? I’m sorry, I know you’re probably going to church then cleaning up from yesterday’s party- it’s just I already told Sonia I could take her boy for lunch and now I can barely reach past my belly to fry Billy’s eggs this morning, and Zach is out-”

Maggie shushes her friend. “Oh please, it’s no trouble. I can come over and help with lunch. Went can handle the dishes here.”

“You’re a lifesaver.”

“I’ll get some groceries, and then we’ll be on our way,” says Maggie. Bridget will still have Sunday school, but Richie will be delighted to see his friends twice in one weekend, if she brings him along. Shoot. She should really ask first. “-Mind if I bring Richie? He’s in love with Billy’s friend, what’s his name, again?”

“Eddie.”

“He’s a cutie. If Richie weren’t already asking when they could play again, _I_ would.”

  
  
-Seven-

Everyone can use a little help from time to time, and this time it’s Maggie’s turn. Went’s receptionist is out with the flu, so she’s been filling in, which isn’t very difficult- but his office is across town from both home and the school. On Mondays, Bridget has Math Club anyway, but it was a real pinch finding somewhere for Richie to cool his jets for a while.

She picks him up from Andrea’s, who answers the door looking bleary and holding a crumpled tissue to her face like it’s the last line of defense between her and nasal nuclear annihilation.

“Wuh oh,” says Maggie.

“Dorry, Maggie. I _wad_ feeling fine until about dree-dirty.” Andrea sniffs miserably. “I dink I shade doo many hands ad temple.”

It takes Maggie a moment to riddle that one out, as they enter the house. “Well, if being a rabbi’s wife is anything like greeting people at church...”

But the kids look okay, and sound even better, bounding through the living room in a parade singing the ‘Honker Duckie Dinger Jamboree’. Any song with that many sound effects built in or a Richie participating in it has a way of tripling the perceived crowd- but she didn’t realize what poor Andrea has been up against this afternoon.

“You have all four of them?” Just Richie and Stanley is trouble enough without a runny nose! “When are Sharon and Sonia coming?”

“Doon, I hope.”

“I’ll stick around. Make you some tea.”

Andrea melts into the couch and feels around for her box of tissues so she can get a fresh hanky. “Danks.”

Maggie wades through the frenzy of boys to the Uris’s kitchen, bopping them each on the head like Little Bunny Foo Foo’s field mice.

“Hiiii!”

“Mommy!”

“Mrs. T!"

“H-hi!”

“Hi, boys. I’m making Mrs. Uris some tea. Would anyone else like a snack?”

They all could use a little quieting, but they don’t realize that’s what Maggie is doing as they jump at the chance with squealing delight.

“All right, everyone go wash your hands and then sit down,” she says, and they scamper off.

Maggie fills the kettle and then pokes around Andrea’s pantry while they swarm the bathroom. There are plenty of crackers handy, and there should be some peanut butter and jelly around here, somewhere, but hmm. She’s not seeing it. She’ll ask Stanley when he comes back, and let Andrea relax.

The boys crank it down a few decibels as they stuff their faces, though that doesn’t quite dispel their earlier commotion. Richie and Eddie squabble over who gets to sit in the chair closest to Maggie and end up sharing it, each hanging off a leg and attempting to lever the other out of the seat. They both look heartbroken when she gets up to take the whistling kettle off the burner. She pours out a cup for each boy, spoons in some sugar, and has just set out the jar full of teabags for them to choose when the doorbell rings again.

“One each, _Richie_ ,” Maggie teases.

“But what’s black tea and orange make together?” he wonders.

Stanley grimaces as he pinches a packet of mild herbal tea. “Yuck.”

“Hallow-w-ween?” Billy suggests, but he takes an herbal tea, too.

Eddie takes the orange tea Richie reluctantly leaves behind. “I’ll do orange, you do black and-”

“We mix!” Richie squeaks in delight.

Honestly, Maggie wasn’t expecting the kids to be interested in the tea at all, just the crackers. She tosses a few spoons on the kitchen table and goes to take Andrea her cup and see who’s arrived.

“Hi, Donia,” says Andrea, wavering at the door. She hasn’t got a tissue in hand but if she weren’t holding onto the door knob she might fall over.

Sonia clocks this immediately, the fuzzy collar of her winter jacket bristling as she jumps to the worst conclusion. “Are you-? _Eddie!_ Eddie Bear!!” She stands in the doorway, clearly torn between the undesirable option to enter and infect herself, and the drive to barge in and haul her son out, bodily.

“Come in?” Andrea tries.

Maggie makes it to the door. “Why don’t you come sit down, the boys are just having a snack.”

Sonia’s already wide, suspecting eyes go even wider. “Snacks!? You’re, you’re sick and you’re serving him _snacks_!” she spits, finally deciding to step into the house. She angles away from Andrea as much as possible, keeping her back to the entryway wall, like exposing it would be fatal. “Eddie!”

“Oh, brother,” Maggie huffs, shooting Andrea a look before following Sonia through to the kitchen.

As if they rehearsed the tableau to most upset his mother, Eddie is still sitting in Richie’s chair, passing one cup of tea back and forth between them, Richie blowing on it, Eddie dipping his tongue in, then handing it back for Richie to do the same...

“You! You boy, stop that, right now! That’s _filthy sick_ , the two of you!” Sonia shouts, and Maggie never knows quite what to do when other people shout at her kids. She had a shouting, critical mother and maybe she’s over-corrected, maybe she’s too permissive, too easy going with them. They don’t know what to _do_ when someone shouts, and Richie has already gone white as a sheet, eyes glittering behind his glasses. “I can’t _believe_ you, Andrea!” Sonia keeps going, “-There’s a flu going around, and my Eddie is _delicate_ , his lungs are already weak from the asthma-”

Maggie jumps in as soon as Sonia takes a breath. “If you want to yell at someone, Sonia, yell at me,” she says, stepping in and taking the cup before the boys can keep passing it around. “Andrea was doing us _both_ a favor babysitting, and only just realized she was sick. And she didn’t make the boys food, I did.”

“Then we’re going home. _Eddie_.” Sonia stamps and points to her side, picking on the one person Maggie can’t quite defend from her. “Get your things!”

“Sorry Mommy,” Eddie says, looking to Richie like a kicked puppy as he slips off the chair.

“Eddie shouldn’t see any of you until this bug is gone,” Sonia mutters as she follows him to the Uris’s coat closet. "Or maybe ever!"

Richie’s chin wobbles, dripping in tears. “I didn’t mean to make Eddie sick,” he sniffles.

“No, I know, honeylamb,” Maggie says, patting his back. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

“-but whadda ‘bout Richie’s birthday!?” Eddie objects in the other room.

“No!” Sonia holds firm. Then the door slams.

Stanley frowns. “Sorry...”

Maggie sighs. “Billy, where’s your mom right now? Can I call her and bring you all back to my house for dinner?”

That’ll let Andrea go to bed early, and give Richie a little extra company to get him through the blues.

“Hh-ho-home with the b-baby.”

“All right. I’ll give her a call and tell her to pick you up there instead. You boys go get your coats.”

  
  
-Eight-

Everything, every waking moment has been _Star Wars_ lately, so of course, all Richie wants for his birthday is a Jabba the Hutt that he can cuddle. And Maggie loves that about him, that he refuses to stop liking something just because it’s not the popular option. Truly. The thing is- while there are scads of Ewok teddies at the store, it never occurred to anyone in toy making to do anything but figurines (that Richie already got for Christmas) to suit such needs. This phase won’t last much longer, she knows, where she’ll give him warm, folded laundry to put away and he’ll tuck it under the covers of his bed and crawl in with it for a while. Where he’ll curl up with her on the couch at night, and love her best, and call her Mommy instead of roll his eyes and call her _Ma_. Bridget’s already there. She’d die of embarrassment if Maggie gave her a handmade gift in front of all of her friends. She wants nail polish and her own radio with a tape deck and to never be looked at again until she’s past puberty, if at all possible.

There’s some catseye earrings that Maggie never wears anymore, though. She breaks the backs off of them and glues them to some fabric from an old sweatshirt of Went’s, and stuffs and stitches until it’s something she can call a slug.

And Richie _loves_ it.

  
  
-Ten-

“This one,” Richie says, zooming past her down the aisle. He flips Maggie a box and then keeps on trucking.

“ _The Dark Crystal_?” All right. Richie loves puppets, that makes sense. “You can pick three for tonight,” she calls after him.

She had wanted to take the boys to the movies for Richie’s birthday but the only things playing at Capitol Theater are _Pretty in Pink_ , the antithesis of ten year old boyhood, and some R-rated film who’s review included the phrase ‘erotic brinksmanship’. So that’s out.

A minute later, Richie swings back around and hands her _Cannonball Run II_. The first one had been pretty tame. Okay, she nods. The third rental is much more difficult to pick. Richie spends a lot of time wandering around near the foreign film section, though she knows that’s unlikely to be the actual target. It’s cute, but he’s not being very subtle. As unassumingly as she can, she sidles up next to her son and makes a guess.

“You’re looking for a horror movie I won’t say no to.”

Richie snaps his neck to look at her. _How does she know?!_ “Irv, we were never in aisle seven. Honest!” he says, putting up his hands in surrender.

“It’s fun to be a little scared,” Maggie admits. “Me and Dad go see horror movies all the time.”

“Yeah, but every time something spooky happens in a movie Dad bugs out and grabs your knee if you’re sitting next to him.”

Maggie laughs. “Yeah. _But-_ ” she shrugs. “-Every time something spooky happens, Dad grabs my knee.”

Richie squints at her, wheels turning but not getting anywhere. “That’s what I just said.”

He’ll understand when he’s older. Maggie looks over the rack of movies for something she _would_ approve of. Just don’t tell the other moms. “Ooh. Can’t go wrong with _Psycho_.”

Richie takes the box into his hands for inspection. “Is this in black and white? This is _old.”_

“This is classic,” Maggie corrects. She was his age when it came out. Richard had been thirteen and trying to scare the bejesus out of her, and it had worked, but not _too_ much. Just the right amount.

He’s still just this side of the line where he likes to please her, so Richie tucks the box under his arm in acceptance. “Okay, but if it’s sooo boring we all fall asleep-”

“It’s a slumber party, that’s the idea!” Maggie ruffles his hair. “But if turns out it’s sooo scary it keeps you up all night, you can always come cuddle with your _Mommy-_ ”

“Maaaa.”

Later that night, she just so happens to be up to go to the bathroom when they’re in the middle of the movie, so she loiters around the hallway outside of the den, peeking in. As the violins screech, sure enough, all the boys jump out of their skins and into each other’s arms, and Richie and Eddie are _still_ holding hands when she comes back out.

“Goodniiiiight boys!”

  
  
-Twelve-

Stanley shows up in the kitchen with a Pyrex that Andrea had borrowed just in the nick of time. Maggie was already tying on her apron and pulling down cans from the cabinets.

“Oh, I was looking for that to make dinner,” she says, thanking him with only a smile, since he’s outgrown a cheek pinching. “I’m making potato chip pickle tuna casserole.”

“Did Richie come up with that?”

“Nope, that’s all me.”

He looks at her, vaguely surprised. “Sometimes I think Richie came from outer space but then sometimes, I think. No. He’s from right here.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  
  
-Thirteen-

Richie clutches the unwrapped boxes to his chest. “I gotta call the guys. I gotta call that punk kid from the arcade. I gotta call the President of the freakin’ United States!”

“Richie,” Maggie tuts at his language.

“Mama! Papa!” he swoons into an accent, bowing deeply. “I do believe I am the _luckiest_ boy that ever did set eyes on on a Nintendo and I shall _never_ forget the day I was bequeathed _this most fabulous prize_ , by mine most _benevolent_ progenitors who are so gracious and generousisthisenoughyet?” Richie gasps. “Thank you. Really. Top notch gifting, I love you guys, etcetera. Can I go call my friends over now?”

Maggie nods. “I suppose you’ll disappear into the basement for the rest of the night?”

“The rest of the _month_ ,” Richie exclaims, throwing his arms around each of them.

“Great. We’ll rent out your room and throw your dinner down the laundry chute,” Went laughs.

Richie gathers up the boxes full of new games again with a hopeful look in his eye. “Pizza?” he ventures.

Maggie looks at Went. He looks equally hopeful, though he must know it’ll give him heartburn. That’s all right. If the kids are occupied for the night that’ll give her plenty of opportunity to play nurse and lay his head in her lap and watch TV without the kids gagging at them for being soppy.

“Sure. Happy birthday, honey.”

Richie runs off to summon his cohorts, who Maggie and Went point down towards the basement as they arrive over the next hour. Sometime after the pizza’s delivery and subsequent devouring, Bridget comes home from her after-school job, too.

“Is the birthday boy downstairs?” she asks, maintaining her distance with the skill of a lion tamer.

“You guessed it.”

“Please eat some of this pizza,” says Went, poking out a foot from his prone position on the couch to push the box of leftovers farther away.

“Did he like the games?”

“I think you picked exactly the right ones,” Maggie grins.

“Cool,” Bridget nods. “Don’t tell him it was me, and I’ll save you from the rest of that pepperoni.” Without another word, she swoops in and takes the rest of the pizza and spirits it away up the stairs.

When she’s safely ensconced in her room with music blaring, Went turns his head to look up at Maggie out of the corner of one eye. “She smell like grass to you?”

“And yet her grades are even better than yours were, _Joe Cool_.” Maggie pets Went’s hair.

  
  
-Fourteen-

It’s the first time that Richie has no requests. No cake. No particular gift. No particular dinner. No requests from the video store, or to go someplace special. Granted, it’s a week day, so maybe he’s holding onto some wild idea until the weekend- but it feels strange. Since the summer Maggie’s been feeling more and more that he’s pulling away, and she can’t tell how much of that is because he’s teetering on that brink between boy and man, and how much is her own fault. She does feel she's partly to blame.

Maybe the drama with the other parents has seeped into it. Things with Sonia had never been chummy, exactly- but her threatening calls at all hours burned whatever bridges they had built. Eddie still hangs around as much as ever, but Richie’s become more possessive of him, more secretive, like she might destroy that relationship, too. And Sharon has become a ghost of herself in her grief, and Lord knows, _Maggie_ knows- that takes time to recover from. Maybe the boys insulating themselves from their parents lets them recover at their own, more resilient pace, she tells herself. But maybe it’s a sign that they don’t want to.

She hates it, absolutely _despises_ it, but Maggie becomes like her mother. She snoops through the kids’ rooms, not that she would know what to do if she found anything. She already knows about Bridget’s pot and she doesn’t care, because she and Went never wanted to be hypocrites. She already knows Richie is curious about sex, because she’s heard his crass jokes to his friends when they’re down in the basement and haven’t yet realized she’s coming down the stairs. That’s fine! It's just jokes for now, she's pretty sure. She hasn’t caught so much as a whiff of a girl since that redhead this summer, so it’s been _fine_ until now, at least, because she’s never been much of an interventionist. They sat him down, they gave him The Talk. He assured them he wouldn’t ‘be stupid about it’. What more can they do?

He leaves for school before she can get a chance to sing to him in the morning and she doesn’t get her chance at night, either.

  
  
-Fifteen-

“Hey Bridge.”

“Other kid, Ma!”

Richie streaks past her on the couch, where she folds laundry, and stamps up the stairs close behind a friend, laughing his head off.

Ever since Richie got taller than Bridget she keeps doing that. Sometimes he thinks it’s funny, and starts imitating his sister’s higher voice and constantly ducked posture. Sometimes he outright snaps. It seems like everything between them is like that now. Either a joke or an offense. She wants them to connect, but they just can't.

When all of Richie’s clothes are done she stuffs a birthday card into the pile and goes up to deliver it. The door of his room is slightly open and her hands are full, so she just pushes inside.

“Jeez, knock would ya?” Richie scowls, from the bed.

Maggie raises an eyebrow. “What, have you two got a girl under the bed? Hi, dear.”

“Hi, Mrs. T,” says Eddie, laying on his stomach next to him, blithely flipping the page of a comic book.

Richie turns red in some mix of anger and embarrassment. “The door was closed.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to open it if that was the case,” Maggie points out, hefting her basket. “Now come put your laundry away.”

Richie rolls his eyes. “Just put it down, already.”

“You’re skating on thin ice, mister. If you can’t be polite, we can’t have company over for dinner.”

Eddie cowers a bit, darting his big doe eyes down to technicolor bedspread as though he’s searching for Waldo, and for a moment Maggie thinks- well all right, _he_ can stay and Richie can go. But he relaxes when Richie pats his back, and flattens himself so Richie can crawl over him and go retrieve his things. She waits as he opens drawers and flings in shirts and socks and jeans.

“Are you staying for dinner, Eddie?”

“If that’s all right.”

“Of course, dear,” Maggie smiles. She’d always rather have one of Richie’s friends over than one of Bridget’s awkward boyfriends. They never seemed to know anything about her interests or have anything to contribute to conversation, but you could count on Eddie or Ben especially to have some project they were excited to be working on, and to play along with Richie and Went’s jokes.

“Do you think- uh, if it’s not too much trouble-“

Maggie reads Eddie like a book. “I can pull out a spare pillow for you, Eddie.”

“Aw thanks, Mrs. T, but I know where they are.”

“And if your mom calls, are you... here?”

Eddie knows she understands, and looks relieved at the offer to obfuscate. “No.”

Maggie taps her nose.

“You didn’t have to fix my jeans,” Richie then sighs, getting to the bottom of the pile. “They’re _supposed_ to be ripped.” He finally finds the card and starts to rip it open.

“Part of doing laundry is making repairs,” Eddie says, matter-of-fact. “So if you don’t want your jeans patched up, you should start doing your own laundry.”

“There’s a lotta cash in here, _wowza_.” Richie fans his handful of money at Eddie, not to boast, she knows, but in promise to share in his good fortune. Even if he doesn’t share as much with her nowadays, he’s still basically very generous.

Maggie smirks. “I should have given Eddie a card.”

“Well, I’ll say! Ya just missed Valentine’s Day if you’re trying to steal him from me, Ma. He was heartbroken.” 

Eddie blushes and shields his face behind the comic book.

“Then take him someplace nice with that cash, huh? See you at dinner, boys,” Maggie concludes, and heads back out the door.

She hopes Richie’s not too hard on Eddie. She thinks sometimes that he’s not like the other boys, and it must be unrelenting. Especially with his mother being so unkindly fixated. And Richie, while he’s being so quick, always jumping on the most dizzying thing to say, can be a little thoughtless sometimes. She would never say he’s a _bigot,_ no, she raised her children to love all sorts of people- but then again she never would have said the same thing about her own mother, once upon a time.

  
  
-Sixteen-

Maggie holds the front door open for Bridget and her garment bag. “I think I have a set of pearls the right length-”

“I think the hours it took to find a dress I like are testament to the fact I have no overlap with what’s trendy right now, Ma- but it’s all bare neck and chokers here in 1992. No one’s wearing their mother’s pearls.”

Maggie doesn’t push. She’s still bewildered that one of her children, both of whom she had given up on as lost causes, asked for her fashion input at all. She’s just glad she got a go at the other side of Prom Shopping With Mom, since it’s genuinely one of the better memories with her own mother. She didn’t expect Bridget or Richie to buy into the sense of occasion- and that’s what it is. Everything is an _occasion_ from here on out, as they get older and leave home. Proms and graduations and engagements and weddings and babies and-

“Do you smell burning?”

Bridget looks back at her, a little worried. “I didn’t leave any candles? I don’t think?” She rounds the corner from the entryway to the dining room to throw down her bags and stops in her tracks. 

Maggie steps up beside her. “ _Shit_.”

Bridget flinches at that. “Mother!”

In front of them, Richie and Stan are sitting on top of the dining room table, legs crossed with a bunch of flashcards and Bridget’s candles spread out between them. They’ve still got their sneakers on, but she can’t scold them for dirtying the furniture.

“So, you _Sweet Sixteen_ ed me, huh,” says Richie, looking up at her.

Maggie rubs her forehead. “Honey, I’m so, so sorry. I totally forgot.”

“Yup.” Richie’s stony determination to keep a straight face cracks. He flashes every tooth.

Oh, she felt terrible until she saw that. “You’re not upset?”

“Nope. Dad already said when you came back with the car he’d let me _drive_.”

  
  
-Seventeen-

Richie gets the notion to make his own cake, this time around. Eddie comes over before the rest of the guys meet up, and has no qualms about borrowing Maggie’s apron as he assists. Having been put in charge of the frosting, he measures out his ingredients precisely, immediately washing everything he uses, while Richie makes more work for the both of them, accidentally using Eddie’s confectioner’s sugar instead of his own measuring cup of flour. They keep shouting odd, slightly panicked questions to Maggie, sitting in the living room, attempting to read the Sunday paper as Went hands her pages.

“Can Mrs. Dash substitute for salt like on Dad’s chicken?”

“Not in a _cake_ , Richie!” Eddie shrieks.

Went looks at Maggie. “Could frosting substitute for that yogurt thing with the-”

“No.” She folds her page with a finite flip of the wrist.

More clamor from the kitchen. Pans clanking together and water running and someone was just thwapped by a spatula.

“I can’t... fudging... open it...”

“Here, gimme.”

“I don’t need your big dumb frog hands, Richie, you’ll get it all slimy,” Eddie growls. “You were just buttering the pans-”

“ _I can butter cake pans_ ,” Richie sings. “ _Teflon, nonstick or stainless-_ ”

Is that... _Aladdin_?

“Swearifyoucallmeprincess-”

“ _Tell me, princess, which cup is best to melt a chocolate baaar_?”

Eddie contributes an underscoring groan.

“ _I can open this jar_ -”

Then Eddie must give in, because Richie stops with a grunt as he gives the jar a go. Moments later, he mopes into the living room and offers the peanut-butter to Went.

He pops it open, and as if ventriloquist and puppet, they say “Well, I/you loosened it for you/me.”

When he gets back into the kitchen Eddie snickers at him. “So I guess you won’t be majoring in engineering if you can’t work the lid on a jar then, huh?”

“No,” Richie snorts.

“Have you narrowed it down any more?”

“Anthropology, I think.”

“You know Indiana Jones had to get a doctorate to do anything cool, right?”

“Shuttup,” Richie says, without venom. “I could.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” Eddie says, equally as gentle. “Toss that in the sink for me.”

A thunk.

“I don’t wanna be a dig monkey, I wanna do like, the foreign studies stuff. Like how to blend into a culture with-”

“-You mean like a _spy_?”

“Sorta, CIA or FSO or whatever.”

“Huh. All right.”

Then the hand mixer starts up.

Even after a winter of hemming and hawing to get to this point, there is still plenty of time for Richie to change his mind, Maggie has to remind herself. Once he gets into a program, his interest could veer off any number of ways. Translation or tourism, maybe. She’s definitely not in love with the idea of him winding up in Bosnia monitoring military coups. But- she can’t help but be proud he’s so good with languages. That had been her area, too.

  
  
-Eighteen-

Ever since Bridget didn’t come home from MIT for the holidays, Richie’s been put out about it. All winter, just as often as Maggie finds him in his own room, she’ll discover him lounging around in Bridget's when there’s no one else to hang out with. It’s strange, because they were always a little too close in age to get along as they grew up, and it had been a rare event to find Richie permitted entry there. Now, he’ll take his homework in and set up shop for hours, listening to her music.

They already had Richie’s party over the weekend, so after dinner Monday night of his actual birthday, he vanishes and Tori Amos kicks up, and Maggie knows exactly where to go when it’s time to say goodnight.

He’s got several pages of a script spread out around him on Bridget’s shaggy rug- his own work, actually. It’s a play he wrote for the Senior One Acts at the high school. It’s sort of a send up of film noir, with a detective and a jewel thief named Maggie Mae, who has been brainwashed into her nefarious deeds by subliminal messaging in Rod Stewart songs. There are all sorts of notes in the margins. Time codes. Lighting cues. Casting ideas: MIKE AS DT. MORRIS??

Richie sighs as he crosses out a few lines to cut.

“Rainy days and Mondays got you down?” Maggie asks, leaning in the doorway behind him. She knows he must be feeling lonely, if he’s here.

“I dunno. Maybe.” Richie sinks lower over his paperwork, chin resting on a folded arm as the scratch of his pen comes to a stop.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know if you can understand it.”

“This about Bridget?” Maggie can understand about Bridget not being around, maybe better than Richie knows.

“It’s about _everyone_ ,” Richie says. He twiddles his pen lethargically and then drops it. “Have you ever noticed that when people leave here, no matter what they say, they...” He trails off and buries his face in the pile of the rug.

Maggie circles around him to the shelf at the head of Bridget’s bed. She lowers the volume on the radio a bit and then takes a seat on the edge.

“Richie.” _Richard_ , she almost calls him, which she seldom does. “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but she will be back. And so will you.”

“Ugh,” Richie groans, the idea repellent. He’s made it no secret that he’d like to get as far away from Derry as possible just as soon as he gets the chance. He doesn’t know what it’s like for her to hear that as the person who loves him most, over and over.

Maybe it’s time he does.

“When I was your age,” she starts, and she can feel the resistance in the room to that utterly cliche string of words, and in her own throat, pulling tight. “A little younger, actually. Fifteen, or so. _He_ was eighteen. He- I never- I know I’ve never talked much about your uncle. My brother.”

Richie rolls his head, looking up at her through glasses awry. “Uncle Richard.”

Maggie nods. “Our parents, our mom especially, she was really tough on us. Really insecure. Because of The Great Depression, and all that, I suppose. She didn’t think anything mattered but having work and money and things that couldn’t be taken away, but _it can be_ , Richie, you know that- you’re smart enough to see that.”

“I mean. I take Economics.”

Maggie laughs. Right, okay. _Eighteen years old_. An adult with none of the experience. God, she should have talked to him about this years ago, not now, when their time being as close as they’ll ever be is just about up.

“Well, Richard could never see eye to eye with that. He was a poet. A bigger hippie than Dad, if you can believe it-”

“Not possible,” Richie cuts in, but he pushes over onto his side to look at her and listen more seriously.

“I remember he had about thirty-eight dollars- that was his whole savings before he enlisted. And he gave it to me to spend ‘all in one place’.”

She had put it toward tuition, in the end. Her own escape.

“I always thought he was, ya know. Drafted,” Richie says.

Maggie shakes her head. “He was just trying to get away from our mom. Maybe shut her up at the same time, saying he wasn’t any of the things a man was supposed to be, back then. He always said he’d-” her voice cracks and Maggie has to take a moment to breathe. “He said he’d come back home, when he was.”

Richie sits up. He sniffs too. “Ma-”

“So _please_ ,” Maggie says, beckoning him to her like she used to after a tumble, but this time she’s the one who’s hurting. Richie shuffles over on his knees and throws his arms and head into her lap. “Come home when you’ve done it, honeylamb. Whatever it is.”

He doesn’t say anything, but he nods his pokey chin at her and lets her comb out his wild hair with her fingers. Her eyes fall on the tokens of little memories that have happened in this room. Toddler Richie following her as she vacuumed the house. Tucking Bridget and Richie in together whenever they had Grandma or Went’s brother in town, needing Richie’s room. Plopping baby Richie in the middle of a pile of stuffed animals to amuse himself while she detangled Bridget’s equally unruly hair after a bath. He didn’t like it when she cried, either. He was always overly sympathetic like that, crying or puking when his sister did. Sometimes she wondered if they’d get hiccups at the same time, even when they were apart.

“Maybe we should drive down to Boston to go visit, over Easter,” Maggie suggests.

Richie lifts his head, brightening. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry, I know you were already making spring break plans with your friends-”

“Oh crap.”

“-but we’ll have room for one more person in the car.”

“Really?” Richie jumps up to hug her around the neck. “Thanks Ma.”

Maggie squeezes her son back. “If you _promise_ not to gang up and tease me about my tapes.”

“I was gonna ask Eddie but now I’m worried you’re _both_ gonna sing Bee Gees off-key the whole time.”

  
  
-Nineteen-

Maggie taps her nails against the plastic of the phone receiver, not sure what else there is to say. Her mind is a checklist of things that need to be done right now, without room to do something so indulgent as to have feelings about any of it. Or grieve, or grieve that she doesn't feel like grieving. At least she remembered to say happy birthday to Richie first, even if she didn’t feel like singing it.

“I’ll look up the bus schedule,” Richie promises.

There’s not a direct way to get from Syracuse to Derry. He’ll have to change over in Springfield probably, and Boston, and Bangor. He’ll be exhausted for the funeral and then have to turn around to get back to school and do it all over in reverse.

“If you can’t make it, it’s okay,” Maggie says, sincerely. “Maybe- maybe you should stay at school.”

Grandma never appreciated him like she ought to, anyway.

  
  
-Twenty-

“-and now I’m meeting people who work in the field, and like. I dunno,” says Richie. “I don’t want to be _that_. They’re like. Cops.”

The realization that his intended career path wasn’t all disguises and adopted accents has finally caught up with him.

“Well, you still have time to refocus your courses, don’t you?”

“Uhm.” Richie pauses and Maggie knows what he’s going to say before he says it. This is a long time coming. For as desperately as he wanted to get out of Derry, he hadn’t been especially interested in college as the stepping stone to do so. “I’m not going to, though. I’ll finish out the semester and then, uh. I’m dropping out,” he says, finally.

Maggie sighs and goes quiet for a long moment, trying to put her thoughts in order.

“Ma?”

“If it’s not right for you, I don’t want you to make yourself miserable, honey, but I just hope you have some idea what’s next.” She doesn’t want him sleeping in the hallway of some tenement, living off cans of tuna like a stray cat. “Are you going to come home for a bit? I bet there will be a few of your old friends at the beginning of the summer, coming home at the end of term-”

“No, no, Ma, it’s- I have some friends getting a place in New York. If I just wasted two years, I should get there and get right into it, already.”

  
  
-Twenty-one-

“- _Happy birthday, to you_ ,” Maggie sings.

“Thanks Ma.”

“I know you’re probably eager to get out there and celebrate tonight, I don’t want to keep you-”

“Actually, uh,” Richie clears his throat into the speaker. “I’m holed up right now? I should tell you so I don’t like, make a joke about it later and freak you out-”

“Honey?” Maggie clenches the receiver a little tighter.

“I got hit by a car crossing the street a couple days ago?”

“Oh my god!”

“But it’s like- it was the ideal conditions to get hit by a car, I swear,” Richie pitches his voice up, talking quick. “It was basically a stunt. I’m fine, just sore.”

“Did you go to the hospital?” Maggie asks, just as urgently.

“No! No. I just got clipped and like, just skinned my knees and got some bruises. It’s totally cool.”

Every time Maggie blinks she can see him behind her eyelids, sprawled and broken. Last she saw him, he’d grown out his sideburns for a college theater production of _Hair_ , making him look so much like Went when they first met in ‘71. Now in her mind's eye there’s blood dribbling down that scruffy face.

“Can I come down? I’m coming down to see you.”

“Ma, I practically live in a closet, I don’t have anywhere to put you, here.”

  
  
-Twenty-two-

  
  
“ _-Happy birthday to you._ ”

“Thanks, Ma.”

“Of course, honey. So. Any big plans? Seeing friends and hitting the town?”

“Nah, I’ve gotta work tonight.”

  
  
-Twenty-three-

“Aw, on your birthday?”

“Yeah, Ma. I still gotta pay rent.”

“Do you need any help?”

“Uhm. I don't- look, I’ve gotta go-”

“At least say hello to Dad.”

  
  
-Twenty-four-

  
  
Maggie's starting to get used to the quick brush off. She listens to one side of the conversation after she hands the phone off to Went.

“Happy birthday, son. Yeah, we’re pretty excited to see you for Bridget’s wedding. It’ll be nice to get together in the spring for once, when we don’t have to deal with the holidays and the snow, yeah...” Went laughs as Richie riffs on that. Mr. Plow, if she had to guess. “Are you thinking of bringing anybody?... No, I just wondering. Oh, all right. Yep. Bye, son.”

  
  
-Twenty-five-

Richie hasn’t been answering his phone when she calls, since the blowout at Thanksgiving. She’s heard through Bridget that he’s about to leave New York for California, but the details are scant, since Bridget herself is wrapped up in trying to iron out her marriage before the baby is born. Maggie’s fully prepared to sing to Richie’s answering machine, but for whatever reason- he picks up.

“Hello? That you, Ma?”

She’s so happy to hear his voice again, she feels full of its music instead of her own.

“Honey, hi. Thanks for picking up.”

“Sure.”

“I wanted to say-” Maggie pauses.

_I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I love you. I’ll always love you. I don’t care, don’t keep yourself from me. Don’t leave. I can’t lose you, too. Not forever. Why can’t I keep any of you?_

“-Happy birthday?” Richie guesses.

“Yeah, Richie, happy birthday.” 

“Thanks.”

Maggie draws a deep breath. “And. I just wanted to say- that I’m sorry if we made it so you- you couldn’t be yourself. I never wanted that.”

She thought he understood. She never wanted to be like her own mother, that way. But maybe- maybe she was too indulgent with them, and not involved enough. How could she not have known? And now Went had died, never knowing, and she prays that that’s not the way Richie would prefer it. He should have love and he should be able to share it and he shouldn’t be afraid of what his family would say.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Richie huffs. “No, Ma. It’s- it’s not your fault. You and Dad... You were great. But you’re not everyone there is in the world.”

“I didn’t know, honey- I would have done better.” How great of parents can they have been if they didn’t give him what he needed to face the world?

“I didn’t- I _don’t_ want anyone to know. Okay?” Richie chokes.

It makes Maggie’s own nose prickle. She wishes she could hold him like when he was little, so he can’t let go, but he’ll brush her off any moment now.

“-I don’t want to talk about it,” he grumbles. "Actually, I have work soon."

Maggie wishes she could think of something to ask to keep him talking but she can only think of questions that will force him away faster. When did he know? Did someone hurt him? Is he happy, has he found someone that makes him happy like he used to be?

“Okay. Can I call you again tomorrow?” The very least might be the best either of them can do, for now.

Richie sighs. “Fine.”

  
  
-Twenty-seven-

  
  
She still hasn’t seen Richie in person since Bridget’s and now he’s moved to California, but they’ve been talking on the phone about once a week. Usually at night. Maggie likes to think it gives her a break from drinking alone, at the very least. Sometimes Richie will fall asleep on the phone with her, even though she’s hours ahead of him. It makes her think of pulling into the driveway at home with the kids at night after a long trip, having been singing along to the radio. Turning around and realizing they’ve conked out in the backseat on each other’s shoulders.

He lets her talk about memories of Went, and baby Simon, and her new home in Myrtle Beach for as long as she likes. He mostly listens. She tries to tiptoe closer to his life by revealing more of her own, and it half works. She understands what he’s doing with his career now, but nothing personal. Slowly she realizes, this is because he isn’t doing anything personal, at all.

Somehow that’s sadder than a secret.

Then he surprises her while she’s talking about the sweetpeas and the lamb's ear she’s planting in her garden.

“I should come see your new place.”

  
  
-Thirty-

“The big three-oh,” Richie grins over the phone.

“I remember my thirtieth. That was the day you learned the word ‘shit’,” Maggie grins back. “I dropped the hairdryer in the toilet while you were taking a bath.”

“Momentous. I should be giving you residuals. And maybe calling OCFS retroactively for nearly electrocuting me.”

  
  
-Thirty-one-

Maggie laughs. “Well, that’s all for now. I knew I’d probably be waking you up, but I’m out and about all day today and I didn’t want to forget.”

“Mmkay, I’ll catch you later, Ma,” Richie says sleepily. “Thanks.”

“Love you, honey.”

She puts her cell back into her purse and turns back to Robert. Their lunch has been served while she was putting in her call.

“It’s very sweet that you do that,” he says, lifting a glass in her honor.

“I’ll bet he’s sick of it,” Maggie says.

“How old?”

Maggie raises her own glass. “Thirty-one.”

“I still can’t believe you have children in their thirties.”

“Oh please, that’s such a line,” Maggie rolls her eyes. “I should know, my son’s full of ‘em.”

“Pick-up artist?”

“Professional comedian. He’s getting real TV work, and everything.”

“Is he any good?”

Maggie winces. “Unless I was Bob Hope’s mother I don’t think I’d want to be checking in on my son’s stand-up.”

“Hah. In this day and age, that’s probably wise.”

She wasn’t sure about taking Robert’s invitation, and she’s still not. She’s never heard him talk about anything _real_ in the class where they met, though maybe that’s because it’s an immersion course and his Spanish isn’t very good yet. She should give him an invitation in return.

“It’s tough for him, though,” Maggie says. “His act. He’s gay and that doesn’t really fly in the industry, so he has to be this character all of the time because that’s what people expect.”

If Robert’s going to have a problem with Richie, then he’s going to have a problem with her. She won’t undo the slow progress they’ve made these past few years for anyone, no matter how rich or insistent he’s been to romance her. She already had a great love of her life, and she wants to fully support Richie the day that happens for him, too. There will be no more roadblocks added on her account.

Robert furrows his brow. “That must be hard when comedy’s so personal. And that’s on top of being like a door to door salesman, right? Lots of time on the road away from home. It must be lonely.”

Maggie breathes a sigh of relief.

  
  
-Thirty-three-

Bridget has finally succeeded in setting her up with a Facebook, so Maggie makes a post for Richie’s birthday. She’ll call him later, too, but she’s already here.

There’s a picture of her hosing Richie down in the kitchen sink on his first birthday that she loves to pieces. The balloons tied to the highchair. The smear of frosting across his face. The beer next to the soap bottle. Her shoes kicked off to the side.

_Happy birthday, honey. Keep it clean on here. Love, Ma_

  
  
-Thirty-five-

“I got mistaken for Jemaine Clement the other day, I’m really moving up in the world,” says Richie.

“I don’t know who that is,” Maggie admits.

Computer keys chatter. “Hang on, I’m emailing you a link. This could take awhile. There’s like, a hundred YouTubes I need to send you if we’re opening these floodgates.”

“Uh oh.”

  
  
-Thirty-eight-

“Are you making it to Bridget’s for Easter?”

“No, not for Easter, I’m booked,” Richie sighs. “But I’m gonna get out there this summer and drag her and Simon to Cape Cod or something.”

“Robert’s been looking for an excuse to sail up the coast. We could meet you there.”

Richie makes a sound like a surprised dog. “Wow, Ma, I didn’t realize you were an old salt, now. Yo ho ho and a bottle of merlot, huh?”

Maggie laughs. “It takes about two weeks, so the sooner you decide-”

“Arr, matey, this I gotter see!" he says. "You doing the _Titanic_ arms thing comin’ right at us on the beach. I don’t even know- where’s a good place for you to land, doing that?”

“Provincetown?” Maggie floats. “We could go to Pride.”

Richie groans. “C'mon Ma...”

"What would it hurt?"

"My whole career?" he reminds her, patiently.

“It was a nice try,” Maggie sighs.

She’ll keep trying. She’ll keep making it okay for him however she can. By the time they hang up, at least she gets him to make plans for a family vacation in Nantucket, though she suspects that his enthusiasm may stem from it’s potential for dirty limericks.

  
  
-Forty-

“Did you get to do anything special for your Over The Hill? Go out?”

Richie sounds like he’s had a few drinks. Enough to mark the occasion plus maybe two more.

“No, I had a long weekend with shows in Houston. I crawled into bed yesterday at like, noon after getting back in,” he says. “Then I had a stack of scripts to look at and they all blew and I don’t know how the hell this is all still spinning. Like, it shouldn’t work. The hill- right? At some point I got pushed over it, and I had momentum! And that was great until I got scared it wasn’t going to last, so I started ripping pieces off and throwing them over the side, and I kept going and could ignore it for a bit, but now I’ve got no wheels left and I’m just- sledding on an empty tank with burning rubber and sparks flying off. In fucking Houston.”

It makes Maggie’s heart ache. “You used to love to sled.” Bridget, she always had to drag the sled back up to the top for, but not Richie.

“Did I?” Richie croaks. “Because I can hardly remember what I like. Or what I _was_ like. I thought I left home to go see all these places and be a different person there, and that would make me happier, but...”

Maggie can’t remember what exactly had been going on when she turned forty. Richie would have been thirteen that summer. It had been a dark time, that much she knows. She had felt disappointed in herself, and worried that she’d done everything wrong up until that point. That’s just the way of aging, as you keep putting more road in the rear-view mirror.

“Forty was a real low for me, too, Richie. These milestones are always tough. Taking stock of-”

“Of _what_ , Ma!?” Richie bites. “What do I have? I can’t even go back home to check and see if it was really better all along.”

“You can, you can always come see me or Bridget-”

“I want it to be at home _here_. Not just in LA when I get back from working, like, _inside_. When’s it gonna feel like running up the stairs in Derry again?”

Maggie has long since accepted that being a parent doesn’t automatically mean having the answers like the back of a puzzle book. “I don’t know, honeylamb.”

  
  
-Forty-one-

For once, Richie calls her first. It should tip her off.

“Hey, woah! Up with the birds, huh?”

He even sings along with her, though very softly, like he might disturb the morning’s peace. It’s only six in LA. On a _Tuesday_. Maggie does a double take at the clock on her mantle.

“Have you got a big day planned that you’ve got to start out early on?” she asks. Maybe he’s treating himself and flying out to Hawaii or something.

“Nope,” he says, popping the P. “I’m stayin’ in. Thought I’d make myself a cake. Or like, whatever the no-flour, no-fun hipster version is these days. Depends.”

“On what?”

Maggie can hear the ticking of a gas stove top being turned on on Richie’s end. “Hmm? Oh. Allergies?”

“You don’t have any allergies, Richie,” Maggie squints.

“Depending on what I have in my kitchen then? I don’t think I’ve purchased a bag of flour since I dropped my baby in Health junior year.”

Maggie thinks for a second that maybe she hears someone else laugh at that when she does, but maybe it’s just Robert moving around elsewhere in the house, here on her end.

“But!” pronounces Richie, “-I have been told that necessity is the mother of invention.”

There’s a smack of lips. “Wow, Tozier. You remember how to use a stove?” someone else there asks Richie, _definitely_.

Maggie can’t believe it. “Necessity must be very proud of her son.”

Richie chuckles. “Thanks, Ma. I gotta go, I got my hands full. I’ll update you later, bye-eee.”

  
  
-Forty-two-

Maggie cuts her breath short at the unexpected _Hey Mrs. T._

“Oh, hello Eddie dear. How are you?”

“Fantastic, you?”

“Surprised,” Maggie says, honestly. She still hasn’t quite gotten used to there being someone else in Richie’s orbit, humming through the background of things, snarking at him on the sidelines and occasionally stealing the phone. “Where’s Himself?” she asks.  
  
“The shower,” Eddie says, quick, and yes- now she can pick out the sound of running water, but it gets further away as he retreats in to another room. “But I wanted to tell you something.”

Her stomach flips. “Is this- _are you gonna ask today?”_

“Mhmm!”

“Congratulations!”

Maggie can picture him, eyes wide as ever, trying not to burst with happiness. Idling in the hall of Richie’s house, where there are new and old pictures of them both, hung on the wall. She and Bridget had a field day putting their heads together to try and dig up the first photo there ever was. They found it in some boxes Bridget rescued when Maggie had left Derry, unable to look through everything herself. Andrea Uris’s stockinged feet stand in one corner as she chats with someone off camera, and the floor is scattered with Lite-Brite pegs and scraps of wrapping paper as little Richie and Eddie wrap each other in a hug, only two front teeth between the pair of them. There’s another photo of a minute later, as Eddie falls over in a blur, laughing at something Richie had said. 

“Do you think he expects it?” Maggie asks.

“No, I don’t think he does,” says Eddie. “I think he’s still burned out. He was all on guard around Valentine’s, right? So I faked him out with a scavenger hunt to Indianapolis, it was this whole thing- he like, couldn’t stop getting worked up every time we got to another clue, thinking it was the last one?” Eddie chuckles. “We were an hour late. _To see John Williams_. You can imagine the emotional whirlwind that was.”

Maggie knows all too well. “I think I still have claw marks on my arm from the time we saw Raffi. But, oh my gosh, Eddie, I won’t keep you! You have things to do!”

“Yeah!” he agrees, breathlessly. “Later, Mrs. T.”

“Please dear, Ma is fine,” Maggie smiles.

“Bye Ma,” he says.

When he hangs up, she imagines him once again, that exuberant blur.

  
  
-Forty-three-

“I like the blue.” Richie decides. “But what can I say, I’m a sucker for matching outfits.”

“It’s not blue, it's periwinkle. And it’d go better with that necklace you bought her for Christmas.”

“You mean _you_ bought her.”

“It was a joint gift.”

Richie fake dials his phone. “Hi, Bridget? Yeah. Pack it in. Ma has her dream child now, she doesn’t need us anymore. Nice working with ya.”

Maggie gives the lilac dress one more chance, shifting it in front of her and the other hanger so they can all get a look in the mirror. “I’ll wear the sandwich-board from the Sprint store next door if that’s what you want, guys.”

“No, no, no,” says Eddie, stepping back, hands in the air. “It’s up to you, don’t listen to me, oh my god I put you through the mother-in-law marathon getting here.”

“We owe you a fancy dress for the wedding,” Richie shrugs beside her.

“At least,” Eddie nods.

“And a grandkid.”

Eddie stops in his tracks. “That’s- that’s- I thought we weren’t telling people about that just yet, Rich, _remember_?”

“Oh puh-leez. You tell Ma secrets all the time, little Mr. Lite-Brite proposal,” Richie smirks at him. “That’s the married name I’m putting on the license, by the way, Eds.”

“But- really?” Maggie asks. “Soon?”

“Yeah.” Eddie gives every one of his dimples a work out, smiling a wiggly smile. “We’re gonna start fostering when Richie wraps this tour.”

Maggie turns back and forth between the two of them, tears already in her eyes. “Well, what are you doing? Don’t just stand there, come here, both of you!”

They rush around her in a three way embrace, crushing her hair and each other as they competitively squeeze.

“Ma, if it weren’t for you-“ Eddie starts. 

“You’ll be great,” she assures them both.

“-I don’t think I’d know how to do it.”

Richie rocks them all in his arms like he might uproot them entirely. 

“Oh, boys.”

  
  
-Forty-four-

“Happy birthday, Daddy.”

“Thanks, _Grandma_ ,” Richie grouses, as obnoxiously as possible. “Hey, finally another grown-up to talk to.”

Maggie may be a retiree for whom days of the week are trivial, but she’s pretty sure it’s a Saturday. “Isn’t Eddie around?”

“I mean for Al, here. She’s five going on sixty, at least,” Richie chuckles. “No love for my Peppa Pig this morning. She asked if Judge Judy could make her breakfast instead.”

“Well, I can’t blame her, kid’s shows these days. Have you heard what Daniel Tiger sounds like now?”

“I know, I know, I try to think about it as little as possible.”

Richie’s probably cramming that kid full of thirty year old VHS tapes that he had no idea why he was hoarding until now. There are all these sweet little parts of him that are reemerging, lately. Funny voices he used to do, and games he’d made up a lifetime ago are finding a new audience. Speve and Spike are back, and so is chopping and screwing song lyrics to fit any occasion. This is the most himself Richie has been in years, and Maggie is so glad he’s finally home.

“Well,” she clears her throat. “Put Al on the phone for me, will you? We have a duet to perform.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! It's such a labor of love to write from the POV of a character that has no lines, haha. If you liked this, please do read The Kid's Table, teen/adult Bridget is <3.


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